Reports have it that the British-Israeli lawyer Nicholas Kaufman is being paid $2.5 million a month for defending former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court, in The Hague. 

That comes to P145 million at an exchange rate rounded off to P58 to the US dollar. Since he has been engaged for a year now, Kaufman must have made around $30 million (P1.7 billion).

Judging by his performance so far, he would seem to me an insanely overpaid troll, except that he does his trolling, his concocting, openly, offline. And that was on full display at the pre-trial hearing last week, although much of his concoctions had been previewed in postings and other propagandistic proclamations by regular Duterte trolls, which made him, to that extent, a mere echo. 

In any case, Kaufman portrayed the prosecution’s presentation at the hearing as, in his own favorite idiom, “cherry-picking,” meaning laden with elements — cherries, as it were — preselected to suit the prosecution’s purpose, to the exclusion of elements that could work against it — non-cherries. His quarrel, in other words, was not so much with the elements contained in the presentation as with the way those elements were deployed — against Duterte. But naturally! 

But then again, the way the elements were deployed was hardly disputable, for, however else they are deployed, they simply cannot favor Duterte. After all, those cherries come from a whole cherry orchard — pick away, even blindfolded, and you get only cherries, nothing that suits Kaufman’s taste. In fact, Duterte himself built that orchard, and, a certified narcissist, he derived a sick delight out of what he had built. 

Campaigning for the presidency, he had vowed to eliminate the country’s drug problem in three to six months as a centerpiece campaign. Sure enough, upon taking office, he declared a war on drugs and proceeded to give out the order, “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Consequently, thousands were dead, dutifully extrajudicially executed. And even after his presidency, and presumably retired from his war too, he continued to gloat over it.

Untouched by the Philippine judicial establishment, Duterte is now detained in The Hague, delivered there on a warrant of arrest issued by the International Criminal Court, charged with crimes against humanity in those drug-war murders. 

In the meantime, Kaufman continues to harp on cherry-picking, picking on the news media this time. He puts them as pickers in an orchard of his own concoction, and says that during the drug war they reported and published pictures preselected and framed out of context to incriminate Duterte. 

Poor Nicholas. He was thousands of miles away from the brutal and sordid scene, and now, to deserve his fat fee, he can only imagine, then concoct. 

The truth of the matter is that Duterte himself was only too willing to supply the media with their material — the quotes, straight from the horse’s mouth, and access to some of the raids and killings. He did not dispute the accounts so long as they were presented devoid of elements and criticism that put his drug war in a negative light — cherry picked, precisely. In fact, many in the media did admit feeling intimidated and going along to avoid reprisals. Some of them even tried to ingratiate themselves with him by asking him softball questions at press conferences and even laughing at his vulgar and otherwise unfunny jokes.

The lessons were particularly costly for two media organizations that got on his wrong side. ABS-CBN, at the time the nation’s widest-reaching broadcast network, lost its congressional franchise. This independent online news site itself, and its founder, chief executive officer, and executive editor, Maria Ressa, were taken to court on multiple imagined lawsuits. They were, finally, fully exonerated after Duterte’s term, in 2023. In the middle of that four-year judicial struggle, she received the Nobel Peace Prize, for 2021.

If the defaulting media suddenly find their critical voice now, as Kaufman also notices and cites to support further his cherry-picking theory, it does not prove bias against Duterte. It rather looks more like making up for the default. 

Kaufman’s problem is a fundamental one. He can only concoct, because there’s nothing in reality, nothing in the truth, that he can use, or even cherry-pick from, to help his client. Indeed, he has nothing, although he gets to collect his $2.5 million a month all the same. 

Full stop, end of story. – Rappler.com